For Catholic Politicians, a Hard Line

Raymond Burke, the archbishop of St. Louis, has said he would refuse to give Communion to John Kerry based on the senator's stance on abortion. (Richard Krauze -- The Post Dispatch Via The AP)

Today, Easter Sunday, tens of millions of American Catholics will crowd into churches to attend Mass and receive Holy Communion in honor of Christianity's most sacred feast day, the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Among those standing in the Communion line may be Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, the likely Democratic nominee for president.

Or maybe not. Although aides to Kerry have announced that the senator will attend Easter Mass at a Boston church -- probably the Paulist Center, where he and his Catholic wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, are regular worshipers -- any decision by Kerry to receive Communion at that Mass is likely to be a controversial action, a line drawn in the sand of conflict between Kerry and his church over its teachings on the contentious issue of abortion.

That is because over the past few months, several prominent U.S. Catholic bishops, including Sean O'Malley, archbishop of Kerry's hometown of Boston, have decided finally to take a stand against Catholic politicians who support abortion rights. Like many Catholic politicians in this age when the majority of Americans support legal abortion to some degree -- and when the backing of abortion-rights groups can be critical to a candidate's electoral success -- Kerry distinguishes between what he calls his personal opposition to abortion and his legislative support of unrestricted abortion.

The bishops want to make clear that Catholic politicians like Kerry who defy the church's teachings on grave moral issues such as abortion are not in good standing as Catholics and are thus ineligible for Communion. For a Catholic, being barred from the Eucharist is tantamount to excommunication. In fact, it is excommunication: the denial of the church's central sacrament and hence full participation in the Catholic community.

So far, only one U.S. Catholic bishop, Raymond Burke, the newly installed archbishop of St. Louis, has said explicitly that he would refuse to give Communion to Kerry on the basis of the senator's stance on abortion. Burke warned the candidate a few days before the Missouri primary election on Feb. 3 "not to present himself for Communion" in St. Louis-area churches while campaigning. (Kerry finessed the issue by attending a Sunday service at a Baptist church in St. Louis.) O'Malley, replacing Cardinal Bernard F. Law, who resigned last year amid the Boston archdiocese's sexual abuse scandal, hasn't named Kerry specifically, but has been quoted as saying that Catholic politicians whose political views contradict Catholic teaching "shouldn't dare come to Communion." Ironically, Kerry and Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts's other Catholic Democratic senator and also a supporter of abortion rights, received the sacrament at the archbishop's installation Mass last July.

O'Malley's stance marks a major departure from the passivity and confusion with which most American Catholic bishops have approached -- and in many cases still approach -- the conundrum of the Catholic politician who declares that he or she is "personally opposed" to abortion but then, like Kerry, votes to support abortion rights.

During most of the 31 years since the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade legalizing nearly all abortions, the overwhelming majority of the 275 Catholic prelates in America have shied away from imposing anything resembling a sanction on Catholic politicians whose votes do not support Catholic teachings on moral issues. The late Cardinal John O'Connor, revered by many Catholics for his traditionalist views, did publicly rebuke the 1984 Democratic vice presidential candidate, Geraldine Ferraro, for her support of abortion rights. But since Ferarro, a member of the House representing Queens, N.Y., was not a member of O'Connor's Manhattan-based archdiocese, O'Connor had no authority to discipline her, and her own diocese took no steps to remove her from the church. Furthermore, O'Connor never made it clear whether Ferraro was ineligible for Communion because of her position on abortion.

Times have changed, however. In January 2003, Bishop William K. Weigand of Sacramento ordered the Catholic governor of California, Gray Davis, whose administration boasted of making California "the most pro-choice state in America," either to change his views or to stop receiving Communion. (A Davis spokesman responded that the bishop was "telling the faithful how to practice their faith" and that the governor would continue to take Communion.)

A few months later, the Weekly Standard reported that Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, who also supports abortion rights, had received a private letter from Bishop Robert J. Carlson of Daschle's home diocese of Sioux Falls, S.D., instructing the senator to remove all references to himself as a Catholic from his congressional biography and campaign literature. (Carlson subsequently declined to comment on the report except to say that he had been in communication with Daschle, and Daschle, who also refused to comment, continues to identify himself as a Catholic.) Burke, who headed the diocese of LaCrosse, Wis., before his move to St. Louis early this year, sent letters to three Catholic legislators living in his Wisconsin diocese correctly warning them in private that they were jeopardizing their standing in the church by their consistent votes in support of abortion.

The new assertiveness extends beyond individual bishops. Last November the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops set up a task force headed by Washington's Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to suggest ways to punish Catholic politicians who support abortion rights. The task force has not yet issued any specific recommendations, but suggested sanctions have ranged from refusing to let them speak at Catholic institutions to outright excommunication.

One impetus for the sudden energizing of the bishops is a Vatican document on the participation of Catholics in political life issued in January 2003. The "doctrinal note," as it is called, was addressed to Catholic bishops, politicians and other members of the laity who participate in political life.

Pope John Paul II had made it clear in a 1995 encyclical, Evangelium vitae, that Catholic citizens of democracies have an obligation to oppose laws that conflict with Catholic moral teaching on such issues as abortion and euthanasia. But the newer doctrinal note was unprecedented in its specific repudiation of the "personally opposed, but . . . " option for Catholic politicians. The statement declared that Catholic teaching on abortion and the sanctity of marriage are not "confessional values" unique to Catholicism but are "ethical precepts . . . rooted in human nature itself." Catholic lawmakers, the document stated, have a duty not to enact laws "which ignore the principles of natural ethics and yield to ephemeral cultural and moral trends."

Nonetheless, most bishops are still reluctant to respond publicly to Catholic politicians whose views contradict church teaching -- for all kinds of reasons. One is that Canon 915 of church law makes clear that public denial of Communion is a punishment of last resort, to be invoked only against those who "obstinately persist in manifest grave sin." Those words suggest that the bishop should contact the offender privately first. Moreover, the word "manifest" implies that such a form of ostracism is an inappropriate sanction against mere private citizens who disobey church teachings in their private lives. Then there is the perception that the recent sex scandals have robbed U.S. bishops of their moral authority. Another reason may be that many politicians who support abortion rights are politically liberal on other issues, such as welfare and the death penalty, and thus perhaps acceptable to an episcopate whose members tend to be politically liberal themselves.

But the most likely reason is that excommunication so far has proved to be a two-edged sword. In 1989, Bishop Leo T. Maher of San Diego, Calif., forbade Lucy Killea, a former California Democratic assembly member who was a Catholic and was running for the state Senate, to receive Communion in Maher's diocese because of her opposition to abortion restrictions. Killea cast herself as a martyr of conscience and flew to Sacramento, whose ultraliberal bishop at the time, Francis A. Quinn, assured her that she would not be denied the Eucharist in his diocese.

Killea won that election -- and after the trouncing of Maher, few bishops until recently have considered following his example. Indeed, Kerry may be counting on a Killea-style national reaction should a Catholic priest ever turn him away in the Communion line. In a New York Times interview last week, Kerry declared with evident irritation that "our constitution separates church and state," and that the Catholic Church's Second Vatican Council of the 1960s had allowed for "freedom of conscience" for Catholics with respect to choices concerning issues such as abortion rights and same-sex marriage.

Kerry has openly defied the Vatican on other issues (by supporting gay unions, for example). But truth be told, he probably has little to worry about in terms of lost votes from all but the most faithful Catholics. Even among the 45 percent of Catholics who attend Mass weekly or more often, fewer than one-third said in a 1999 poll conducted by the National Catholic Reporter that they thought church leaders should have the final say on the abortion issue. "People just don't like the idea of bishops telling them how to vote," says Philip Lawler, editor of Catholic World Report, a conservative Catholic magazine.

Undoubtedly for this reason, even Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, a prominent church conservative, stated last Wednesday that he was not ready to deny Communion to Catholic politicians who take positions on abortion rights that are contrary to church law.

Most other U.S. Catholic bishops are so far imitating George's caution -- and his discretion. But the very fact that some are speaking out is evidence of a shift that may well lead to a time when Catholic politicians have to be concerned not only about the political consequences of their votes, but also the religious consequences. Which is as it should be.

Author's e-mail:Charfleur@aol.com

Charlotte Allen, who co-edits the InkWell blog for the Independent Women's Forum, is the author of "The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus" (Free Press).